Confederate flag salute in program upsets parents

The Nashville Tennessean ^ | May 14, 2003 | LARRY MCCORMACK

[WhiskeyPapa]

Confederate flag salute in program upsets parents

LARRY MCCORMACK / STAFF

Parents of some students at Avery Trace Middle School in Cookeville are upset because a history program by re-enactors included a salute to the Confederate flag.

By LEON ALLIGOOD

Staff Writer

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. — A program presented by a local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans last Friday at Avery Trace Middle School has angered parents because students were asked to stand and listen to a recitation of a salute to the Confederate flag.

''My son told me something happened at school. I couldn't have imagined it would be anything like this,'' said Diane Paul, whose son attends the school. She asked that his name not be disclosed.

Paul also said the speakers promoted ''revisionist attitudes'' of the Civil War, particularly in regard to slavery.

The program by members of the Dillard-Judd Camp 1828 was similar to one they had presented last year for seventh- and eighth-grade American history classes at the middle school. The members, many of whom are active Civil War re-enactors, came dressed in period Confederate costumes to show the students what life was like during the 1860s.

According to Alma Anderson, the history teacher who organized the event, having the members come to the school offered a chance to ''make history come alive'' for her students.

Anderson said Friday's program began with the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag, for which students were asked to stand. Afterward, the teacher said, her eighth-graders were asked to remain standing for a salute to the Confederate flag.

''They explained they were going to salute not the Confederate States of America but to salute the thought of the folks who served in the Confederacy,'' Anderson said, adding that students were not required to salute. Neither were they provided the words of the salute.

''They were just to stand respectfully. You're not pledging. You're not saying anything. You're just standing there with respect,'' she said.

Diane Paul, however, said the re-enactors went too far when they asked her son to remain standing in honor of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. ''He knew it felt wrong, but he was there with his whole class, all these kids. No one wants to say anything,'' Paul said.

Anderson said no student or parent has complained to her about the program. She said that after the program, her students had a question-and-answer session with the group members. There were no questions about the salute, she said.

''If somebody had been upset, surely they could have come to me,'' Anderson added.

In contrast, she said, one parent thanked her for making the Civil War so interesting to her child.

In addition, Anderson said, Director of Schools Michael Martin attended the presentation. Martin could not be reached for comment.

Paul said she was troubled by ''revisionist attitudes'' of the Civil War that she said were promoted by the members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

''My son was told that a lot of black slaves liked their masters very much and that many blacks wore the Gray. There's a grain of truth there, but there were reasons why they were true. The whole answer wasn't given.

''What answers were given were distorted, and it's the distortion that disturbs me,'' the Cookeville mother said.

''The whole thing was minimizing slavery.''

Reavis Mitchell, chairman of the Fisk University History Department, said a few blacks did own slaves, as well as members of the Pequot Native American tribe in New England.

''Anyone who could buy slaves owned them, but the predominate owners were white,'' Mitchell said. ''However, most Southerners didn't own slaves because slaves were very expensive. What people don't understand is that slavery kept most people poor. However, their dream was to own them or have their children own them. They've identified with a social and economic quest that the great majority of today's South was not historically a part of.''

Anderson denied that the speakers revised Civil War history.

She said the group's commander, Ed Butler, pointed out that some people had made the Confederate flag a racist symbol.

''But it is not a symbol of racism for the Dillard-Judd group. He made that very clear. He said there's no way anybody on this stage is going to say to you that slavery and what we did to the blacks were appropriate.''

Butler, who lives in Cookeville, could not be reached for comment.

Allen Sullivant, spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans' national office, which is in Columbia, Tenn., said the school programs are a local initiative aimed at giving students a glimpse into the mindset of a Confederate soldier.

''We try to give historic presentations to schools that are willing to do it,'' said Sullivant, who lives in Brentwood.

Typically, a few members dressed in period uniform bring artifacts and speak about the life of the average Confederate soldier and his motivation to fight.

Sullivant said the presentations emphasize the complexity of issues such as slavery and the Civil War. ''People tend to boil things down, and sometimes they boil it to a point that the truth is taken out of the situation or distorted.''

Anderson said she would have preferred to have had Confederate and Union re-enactors talk to her students, but she said she could not find any Union ''soldiers'' in the Cookeville area.

''If I could find a Union re-enactor, I'd be all over that person like a duck on a June bug.''

Paul said she and several other parents, who would not talk to The Tennessean on the record, would schedule a meeting with Principal Skip Overstreet and Director Martin.

''We want our concerns to be heard. I think there's a need for dialogue on the issue,'' Paul said.

Staff writer Margo Rivers contributed to this report.

[4mycountry]

Thanks, dighton.
I'm a new Viking Kittie, so some may think it's gone to my head and I want to ZOT at the first sign of anything. But really, I don't. I mean, come on--look at post #101. I think that is plenty justification for my means.

Have we reached a decision? Many seem to be for the ZOT-ing cause--I've only seen one who votes in favor of W.P.

Well? To ZOT or not to ZOT?

[billbears]

Oh heck. I like Walt. I disagree with him 100% on about everything imaginable but think who one would have to argue with about lincoln then. And that would be beyond a disaster.

Besides, worship of lincoln shows exactly how far the Republican party did go away from his dreams, how it used to stand for everything anti-lincoln in the past, and unfortunately how it seems to be turning back to the tyrant's ideals of big government. It shows us how far the party is willing to sell out to get more votes and it gives us a reminder that unless we want more of the big government programs that he instituted we need to get on the ball, and get these CINOs, that seem to be an absolute infestation since the 50s and 60s, out of the party

[WhiskeyPapa]

Jerk. How could you say things like that about our President?

DU called. They want to know where you've been.

I got banned from DU in two days.

Have you been watching Fox? They have exhumed 3,000 bodies and this one site may have as many as 15,000 bodies. It's thought that these people were killed in 1991 in the uprising against Saddam.

Now this uprising was fomented -- by George Bush Sr. SOMEHOW, these people thought they would receive help from the good old USA. But that didn't happen. We left them hanging. I don't think this interpretation is seriously challenged.

Should Bush Sr. get a free pass from History on this?

He sure does from some on FR.

If the president screws up, he shouldn't get a free pass. Of course, 41 didn't lose the election, it's thought, because of the Gulf War. He lost it, by many accounts, based on the economy. Remember that? "It's the economy, stupid."

Remember 41 saying there was a challenge with the "vision thing."

The guy was a lousy president and he'll be remembered as a lousy president.

Bill Clinton a moral disaster? You betcha. But 41 said he knew nothing about Iran Contra. He said he was "not in the loop." Subsequent events showed he knew EXACTLY what was happening -- hey he was the Reagan Adminsitration foreign policy TOP GUN. He'd headed the CIA, been the ambassador to China.

No wonder he was a one term president, and rightly so.

Just because many people keep their blinders tightly fixed doesn't mean much.

Walt

[dighton]

IMHO, it's significant that two who voted for keeping Walt (billbears and aomagrat) generally argue against his positions. To repeat from #97,

... you might want the opinions of WP's allies and foes on Civil War / "War of Northern Aggression" threads -- which I suspect would grow rather dull without him.

[ThreePuttinDude]

LMFAO....that's great, thanks for the laugh

[Colt .45]

"School children do not, and that school had no business in allowing the SCV to have the aegis of legitimacy that appearing in a school provides."

Most intelligent folks know that there are TWO sides to every story or argument. You however, seem to only want one side of the so called "truth" to be preached as factual. You remind me of Adolph Hitler. I guess one could safely apply what he said to your credo ... "We will create the perfect race." You ever hear of Freedom of Speech? How about Freedom of self expression? Or the Freedom of Self-Determination? All the things I put my life on the line to defend for 20 years for Americans, that are contained in the first 10 Amendments of the Bill of Rights?!

But NO, you would rather limit what the children learn to only State sponsored PC thought and speech. To put it bluntly Walt ... as an American ... you suck!

[billbears]

Yes it is Walt. A complete disgrace. That brave men can't be remembered for fighting against a tyrant. Considering that most didn't own slaves and they fought for their land and yet they're still dogged daily by people who could care less what was done and instead revel in lies presented by avowed Socialists like McPherson and Sandburg

It's a disgrace that the Southerners outnumbered four to one kept off invasion forces for over four years and Great Britain and France didn't support them after all that time. It's a disgrace that conservatives, who supposedly call for smaller government, praise a man who ballooned the national debt, introduced national printed money not based on anything, and extended the first federal tax in the history of this nation

You're right Walt. It's a disgrace. It's a d#mn disgrace

[billbears]

They damn near starved thousands of them to death, and then turned them loose

Near? Remember 'Hellmira'? Only 2% less dead than Andersonville? And remember, the yankees up north had food to share

[4mycountry]

Same here. Everyone seemed to be dog-tired of his rants and raves. I've only seen him for one day, and he's gotten on my nerves in a major way.

Even his most loyal companion dissed him this time. The act is getting old. Everyone's tired. Seems to me that that speaks volumes.

[Constitution Day]

Remember 'Hellmira'? Only 2% less dead than Andersonville? And remember, the yankees up north had food to share

Hellmira? Hell yes we remember.

My g-g grandfather Daniel Baker [5th NC] was released from that cesspool of filth in Elmira, N.Y.
Some of my late grandfather's surviving siblings remember him talking about it.

[lentulusgracchus]

The non-historical crap the SCV passes off as history needs to be exposed for the hate rant that it is.

The biggest hater around here is you, Walt.

Thread alert -- for blunderbuss statements contrary to fact, irrelevant quotations in extenso, appeals to authority, popularity, and force, and general obloquy!

[lentulusgracchus]

If the victors wrote the history, there would be no SCV.

Why's that, Walt? Would you hunt them all down, like the Southern troopers you posted up against?

[lentulusgracchus]

Anderson said she would have preferred to have had Confederate and Union re-enactors talk to her students, but she said she could not find any Union ''soldiers'' in the Cookeville area.

When I visited Vicksburg for the third time, in 1998 I think, I caught a program at the Visitors' Center in the military park that featured reenactors, all Mississippians, dressed in both blue and gray. The Union reenactors demonstrated a manual of arms and concluded by discharging an 1863 Springfield. Those in gray had a Napoleon howitzer (I didn't stay for that drill) -- and one of the young artillerists in gray was a black kid of about 18. Yeee, ha. I thought, well, now I've seen it all. I'd read about the black Confederates in Richmond in the last months of the war, but never about the others who've been documented in the last few years.

[lentulusgracchus]

You mean..zees wan?

LOL!

[lentulusgracchus]

What the hell is ZOT?

And what on earth is a Viking Kittie?

[WhiskeyPapa]

Considering that most didn't own slaves and they fought for their land and yet they're still dogged daily...

This is typical of the disinformation spread by the SCV and others.

There were more slave owners in the south than there were real property owners in the north.

"It will thus appear that the slaveholders of the South, so far from constituting, numerically, an insignificant portion of its people, as has been malignantly alleged, make up an aggregate greater in relative proportion than the holders of any other species of property whatever, in any part of the world; and that of no other property can it be said, with equal truthfulness, that it is an interest of the whole community.

While every other family in the States I have specially referred to are slaveholders, but one family in every three and a half families in Maine, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, are holders of agricultural land; and in European states the proportion is almost indefinitely less. The proportion which the slaveholders of the South bear to the entire population is greater than that of the owners of land or houses, agricultural stock, State, bank, or other corporation securities anywhere else. No political economist will deny this. Nor is that all. Even in the States which are among the largest slaveholding, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, the land proprietors outnumber nearly two to one, in relative proportion, the owners of the same property in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut; and if the average number of slaves held by each family throughout the South be but nine, and if one half of the whole number of slaveholders own under five slaves, it will be seen how preposterous is the allegation of our enemies, that the slaveholding class is an organized wealthy aristocracy. The poor men of the South are the holders of one to five slaves, and it would be equally consistent with truth and justice to say that they represent, in reality, its slaveholding interest."

-- J.E.B. DeBow, 1860

DeBow was the taker of the 1850 census.

Now this text has been posted to you personally on numerous occasions and you still spout the neo-confederate lies. You ARE a member of the SCV, right?

Why on earth should such lying spew as I quote you above be allowed in our classrooms?

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

It's a disgrace that the Southerners outnumbered four to one kept off invasion forces for over four years and Great Britain and France didn't support them after all that time.

Whites in the north were a little more than three times more numerous than whites in the south.

The insurgent area was actually larger than the loyal area. Defensive technology was in the ascendant. The rebels had every advantage, but they blew it.

It was a surprise to me when I realized it, but the rebels had no major success outside of Virginia throughout the entire war excepting Chickamauga. Grant and later Sherman marched almost unchecked from Forts Henry and Donelson, through Shiloh, Jackson, Nashville, Chattanooga, through Atlanta and off to the sea. They -always- had their way with the rebels.

Lee had as little success outside Virginia as Pope, Hooker and Burnside had within it.

"The North had a potential manpower superiority of more than three to one (counting only white men) and Union armed forces had an actual superiority of two to one during most of the war. In economic resources and logistical capacity the northern advantage was even greater. Thus, in this explanation, the Confederacy fought against overwhelming odds; its defeat was inevitable. But this explanation has not satisfied a good many analysts. History is replete with examples of peoples who have won or defended their independence against greater odds: the Netherlands against the Spain of Philip II; Switzerland against the Hapsburg empire; the American rebels of 1776 against mighty Britain; North Vietnam against the United States of 1970. Given the advantages of fighting on the defensive in its own territory with interior lines in which stalemate would be victory against a foe who must invade, conquer, occupy, and destroy the capacity to resist, the odds faced by the South were not formidable.

Rather, as another category of interpretations has it, internal divisions fatally weakened the Confederacy: the state-rights conflict between certain govern on and the Richmond government; the disaffection of non-slaveholders from a rich man's war and poor man's fight; libertarian opposition to necessary measures such as conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus; the lukewarm commitment to the Confederacy by quondam Whigs and unionists; the disloyalty of slaves who defected to the enemy whenever they had a chance; growing doubts among slaveowners themselves about the justice of their peculiar institution and their cause. "So the Confederacy succumbed to internal rather than external causes," according to numerous historians. The South suffered from a "weakness in morale," a "loss of the will to fight." The Confederacy did not lack "the means to continue the struggle," but "the will to do so." --BattleCry of Freedom, P. 855 by James McPherson

His sources:

Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 439, 5S; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980),255 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (Collier Books ed., New York, 1961), 250

My emphasis

Walt

[4mycountry]

What the hell is ZOT?

ZOT is when you delete/ban an account from FR. You want to do this when someone who is a democrat or someone with left-wing opinions post something obviosly left-wing. (eg, a post favoring Clinton over President Bush, an article about how much better Gore might have been, etc.) People who do this are commonly called "trolls".

And what on earth is a Viking Kittie?

Ha ha! The Cult of the Viking Kitties! One of my favorite subjects!
The Viking Kitties are a group of people here on FR that assist the AdminModerator in ZOTing people. We don't do it on our own, you know. The Admin must do the actual ZOT. We will alert him to the premise, then alert each other, and the fun begins!

[Treebeard]

Gee, does WALT meet any of those criteria listed above for troll candidacy? ZOT!

[dighton]

Here is Chapter and Verse from the owner of this site. The emphasis is mine. On this particular "vote," I'm going to abstain:

Final comment, liberals and liberal causes. This board was established for discussions by conservatives of events and concepts that are important to us. The media is dominated by liberals. The government is infested by liberals. Our educational institutions are overrun by liberals. The liberal viewpoint and liberal "debate" is forced upon us every day from every news broadcast, TV program, newspaper, school room, congressional debate, and on and on, ad infinitum. We are not suffering for a lack of liberal input. We do not need liberals coming in here to "inform" us or to "debate" with us on the need for so-called gay rights, abortion rights, gun-free rights, or to expand our minds to any other mushy liberal feel good concepts. .... This is not a government funded or approved project and we do not need to offer you equal time. If you are a liberal and want to post on FR (and several long-time posters are), you'd best watch your step and take care not to offend anyone, especially me.